A significant trend in medicine is the introduction of point of care (POC) devices for rapid, bedside diagnosis. These devices enable rapid diagnosis by first responders or medical staff for time-critical diagnoses, such as for indicating whether patients are presenting with cardiac symptoms. Tests have been developed for other indications, such as infectious diseases, drugs of abuse, cerebrovascular disease, that are intended to circumvent the lengthy processing hours and high costs accompanying conventional inhouse laboratory assays. Current POC devices are single use only. While this is suitable for many applications, there is an unmet need for continuous monitoring devices.
An initial clinical need is a device that can monitor and detect the presence of infections in intensive care patients. Currently, many intensive care patients develop infections that are not detected quickly, often leading to sepsis or shock and resulting in a large mortality rate. There is a significant need for a device that can continuously track the concentration of specific protein markers in a patient's bloodstream that are indicative of an infection, for instance.
Devices that are capable of detecting the presence of selected chemicals or biological substances include biosensors that interact directly with a sample molecule to provide a signal identifying the test molecule. Biosensors are often functionalized chemically to make them selective. The readout can be electrochemical, as is often the case for small molecules (e.g. glucose), or can utilize fluorescence or other optical techniques for molecules such as proteins or DNA. Typical biosensors can often operate in a continuous reading mode or can be used multiple times, which differs from conventional laboratory assays requiring bulk reagent handling, usually yielding only a one-time test result.
The miniaturization possibilities afforded by biosensors compared to conventional laboratory assays suggests that point of care (POC) tests could provide dramatically enhanced diagnostic capabilities. The benefits of POC testing include: rapid turnaround which aids therapeutic decisions; quick dissemination of test results to patients, thereby reducing physician workload and increasing patient satisfaction; reduced paper work and simplified sample tracking; and reduced need for specialized technicians. POC tests administered as panels provide further significant benefits. For example, screening for several cardiac markers simultaneously saves time and provides useful additional data. Screens for various types of influenza would aid diagnosis compared to more limited tests on only single strains.
Emerging applications of biosensors include food and water testing, drugs of abuse, bio-defense and “white powder” detection, and veterinary testing, to name a few. Some of these applications have unique needs such as the need for ultra-fast response time in conjunction with bio-defense measures, or high sensitivity necessary in food or water testing to detect a very low number of E. Coli colony-forming units. Typical water testing products use reagents that must be incubated in flasks for 18-24 hours or longer, changing color to indicate pathogen presence. While these products are very effective, the lengthy, 24 hour incubation time can be problematic. When the contaminated water is in a public drinking supply, the water may be in use for extended periods before a pathogen problem is detected. A product that continuously monitors water quality can provide a warning within minutes of actual contamination.
Bio-defense presents unique issues as governmental and military agencies search for ways to rapidly and interactively detect anthrax, botulism, malaria, Ebola virus, ricin, and other potential terrorist agents. Expensive test kits are currently used by the US Postal Service that incorporate real-time PCR to amplify and analyze crude samples obtained from air or suspicious “white powder” on packages and envelopes.
A new breed of biosensors utilizes a phenomenon arising from the interaction of light with a metal surface. This phenomenon is called “surface plasmon resonance” and embodies a charge-density (electron cloud) oscillation that may exist at the interface of two media with different dielectric constants or dielectric constants of opposite signs. This condition is usually met at the interface between a dielectric (glass) and a metal (typically gold or silver). The charge density wave (the electron cloud) is associated with an electromagnetic wave (the incoming photons), and this coupling reaches a maxima at the interface and decays exponentially into both media. This coupling is, in effect, a surface bound plasma wave (SPW).
This coupling cannot be excited directly by incident optical photons at a planar metal-dielectric interface because the propagation constant of an SPW is always higher than that of the wave propagating in the dielectric. Therefore to enhance this coupling, attenuated total reflection (ATR), prism couplers and optical waveguides, or diffraction at the surface of diffraction gratings is used. As the excitation of SPWs by optical photons results in resonant transfer of energy into the SPW, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) manifests itself by resonant absorption of the energy of the optical photons. Owing to the strong concentration of the electromagnetic field in the dielectric (an order of magnitude higher than that in typical evanescent field sensors using dielectric waveguides) the propagation constant of the SPW, and consequently the SPR formation, is very sensitive to variations in the optical properties of the dielectric adjacent to the metal layer supporting SPW, namely the refractive index of the dielectric media which may be determined by optically interrogating the SPR. The thickness of the region of sensitivity varies with the wavelength off the applied energy, but is typically about 500 nm for wavelengths in the visible light range. The refractive index is modified by the presence of materials or impurities at the surface. This is the fundamental effect that can be used to identify the materials or impurities with great precision.
Metals are materials that can provide the negative sign dielectric constant. They have a resonant mode at which the constituent electrons resonate when excited by electromagnetic radiation having the right wavelength. Gold, in particular, has a spectrum with a resonance at visible wavelengths around 510 nm. In the case of the attenuated total reflection in prism couplers, the evanescent wave is sensitive to the metal surface in contact with the media within approximately 200-400 nm of the surface, enhanced by the presence of a surface plasmon wave. Such material effectively modifies the index of refraction and thus the precise angle of critical attenuated total reflection. Interactions between a bound substrate and a sample can thus be probed, measuring small variations in the reflection angle at maximum SPR production.
This effect can be harnessed to study binding between molecules, such as between proteins, RNA and/or DNA, or between proteins and viruses or bacteria. For example, a surface functionalized with a specific antibody will probe for only one antigen (e.g. antigen A) and discriminate specific binding from non-specific binding. That is, antigen A will be detected but weaker interactions between the functionalized protein bound to the surface and another antigen, say antigen B, can be distinguished. Typically, angular resolution of a few millidegrees is required to discriminate between selective and nonselective binding. Thus the detection of protein A in solution as dilute as 1 pg/ml may be achieved. In addition, the reaction kinetics of the binding between the surface protein and antigen A can be elucidated.
Most commercial SPR instruments comprise a sample introduction device or sensor that includes a semispherical dielectric prism coated with a thin layer (50 nm) of a noble metal such as Au or Ag. This metal coating in turn is coated with molecules that will specifically bind a target analyte. These commercial devices further comprise a light source on a goniometric mount, an array detector, and various collimation and filtering optics, as depicted generally in FIG. 1.
Using a semispherical prism, the angle of incidence at the dielectric/air interface is the same as at the first air/dielectric interface where the ray from the light source enters the prism. At the precise incidence angle at which light couples to a non-radiative evanescent wave (surface plasmon) in the metal film, the reflectivity of the film decreases roughly 90% creating an evanescent plasmon field which is localized at the metal surface away from the glass. The evanescent wave's properties depend on the properties of the medium (e.g., biomolecules) in contact with the free metal surface of the sensor. Subtle changes in the refractive index of the medium, such as those associated with molecular absorption onto the surface, induce detectable changes in the surface plasmon resonance angle Φ. The SPR instrument then adjusts the detector position to find this new angle and thus measures the change in SPR angle.
These types of SPR devices have a number of inherent limitations involving sensitivity, sample size, complexity, and cost. Existing commercial instruments require large, complex, and delicate moving parts in order to optimize the incident beam and detector positions. For instance, the goniometric mount for the light source is relatively big and heavy, but delicate. Moreover, the light source itself must provide polarized light. Typical sensitivity limits are on the order of 10−6 refractive index units which is usually sufficient to detect targets with a concentration of 1 pg/mm2 of adsorbed molecule and a size of at least 200 Da, but is not sensitive enough to provide useful detection for bio-terrorism agents in concentrations of 0.01 parts per billion as required by certain government standards. The typical planar sensor footprint is in the range of a few mm2 ( 1/16th mm2 in the Biacore Flexichip and 2.2 mm2 in the Biacore 3000) which creates a technical constraint on the ability to miniaturize these sensors. A larger sensor area means that more test fluid must be provided to flow over the planar sensor. Moreover, the constraints on accuracy also require more test fluid to provide sufficient molecules or microparticles to be detected. Because of an SPR sensor's macroscopic size, arrays of sensing elements for multiplexed analysis require sample volumes too large for most technologies used for analytical integration. All of these limitations of conventional planar sensors reduce the throughput capability of the sensors.
Additionally, most current SPR sensors require p-polarized light (i.e., the electric vector component is parallel to the plane of incidence) and precise alignment of their optical parts, which are comparable in complexity to those of a tabletop spectrometer. This results in high cost, typically on the order of several hundred thousand dollars.